The Exploding Brain

If you are planning to leave America, and lead a hedonistic lifestyle in a place like Gouna, you might think to yourself that you are being irresponsible.

Should you not be doing more to save the world?

Relax.

As an Epicurean, you don’t have to sweat such trifles.

For you have arrived at a stage of life where your goal is to achieve true happiness.

There is little you can actually do to prevent or even materially reduce the general misery that is so prevalent in the world: the best you can hope for is to remove misery from your own life.

A quote from one of my favorites books might be useful here:

“… grasping the way things really are is the crucial step toward the possibility of happiness.”

It’s not the indolent life that is sought by the Epicurean; rather, it’s the stripping away of all that is non-essential to happiness.

This means seeing through things such as avarice, jealousy, overweening ambition, and the desire to dominate others.

It means wanting very little for oneself except a calm life, far away from the din of the hordes of anxious believers, though there is nothing wrong with enjoying what life has to offer, such as the meal shown in these pictures.

Happiness means that if you had only 6 minutes left to live, that you would be perfectly content sitting completely still for 5:59, without any illusions, but also without any fear of what lies ahead, since as an Epicurean, you already know that when your élan vitale is snuffed out at the 6 minute mark, you will no longer care about anything.